January 3, 2025 • 36 mins
Featured during Hour 4 of the Friday, January 3, 2024 edition of The Armstrong & Getty Replay...
- Gottwals on Healthcare Attitudes Part 1
- Gottwals on Healthcare Attitudes Part 2
- Cut the Crap UC Davis Work Ally and America's New Clothes
- Boeing Killed DEI
Stupid Should Hurt: https://www.armstrongandgetty.com/
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
And broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio the
George Washington Broadcast Center.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
I'm strong, and and he I'm strong and Getty strong.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
Stop and think overall about the social contract?
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Can part of the.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
Deal and how we've kept this this democracy's economy of
this country on a fairly steady path for more than
two hundred years has been that those at the top.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Pay a little more in taxes, are a little.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
Less rich than they otherwise might be, and everybody else
at least gets chanced. And what happened when you turn
this into the billionaires run at all is they get
the opportunity to squeeze every last penny. Yeah, and look,
we'll say it over and over. Violence is never the answer.
This guy gets a trial who's allegedly killed the CEO
(01:15):
of United Health. But you can only push people so
far and then they start to take Matterson. It's their
own hands.
Speaker 5 (01:22):
Yeah, none, no, no, no, no, no no no no
no no, I'm.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Just doing the tomahawk chunk. How in the world does
she keep getting elected? Elizabeth Warren? So let's talk about
the murder of the healthcare CEO of the reaction to
us in all matters healthcare with Craig Gottwalls, Craig the
healthcare guru, attorney, law benefit consultant, Benefit or Revolution and
good longtime friend of the Ang Show. Craig, how are you, sir?
Speaker 6 (01:48):
I'm great, gentlemen, Thank you much for having me on.
Speaker 5 (01:50):
First of all, Joe and I went with humor around
the fact that she's a pretend Indian and glossed over
how outrageous that is what she just said. So much
wrong with that at every level anyway.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Now, Craig, is you as a person who has emerged
in the world of benefits and health care and insurance
and that sort of thing, and a person of good conscience,
et cetera, and a student of the media. What have
what's your reaction been to the murder and the ensuing discussion.
I know you've probably got a million things to say.
Speaker 6 (02:25):
Yeah, I think the oversimplified reaction I would give is,
you know, just the assumption that, like I just don't
even engage in the whole concept and the idea of
you know, it's appropriate to slaughter people in the streets
one individual because you don't like what a whole industry
is doing. I mean, obviously it's the most insane, ridiculous, murderous,
(02:46):
horrific way you would ever address any issue. And so,
of course, I think I think, guys, I think a
lot of what you're seeing out there is sort of
like you've said in the past, you know, like you're
frustrated at something, you're angry at something, and part of
humor is the dark sort of stuff that you're not
willing to say out loud. And I think a lot
of what we're seeing online is probably that, you know,
just the irreverent attempts at humor. But I mean, obviously
(03:09):
this isn't the way to address the matter. I mean,
we've created this government corporate alliance in healthcare that is
just bullied the American people for really for sixty years,
but most intensely for thirty years, and so you just
have tremendous frustration out there, and a lot of people
just don't even really understand where they should channel their frustration.
So a lot of the frustration channeling, if you will,
(03:32):
is falling along party lines, like everything else in our world.
So some people blame the government, some people blame private
equity and large corporations, and I'm here to tell you
there's plenty of blame to go around.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Yeah. The one thing that's frustrated is frustrated me. And
maybe you've heard us hammer on it, is that all
these people who howling about the greed of the healthcare companies,
the insurance companies and all, they never mentioned the unholy
nexus with governments and how Obamacare in particular just utterly
perverted the industry.
Speaker 6 (04:02):
Yes, it's funny you bring that up. I was thinking
of you know that the book that is cited. You know,
he had words written on the bullets, and a lot
of people jumped on the book Delay Defend, excuse me, Delay, Deny,
Defend by Jay Seinman was the book. That book was
written in twenty ten. So the reality is there, if
there ever was a time when large insurance companies were
(04:24):
financially economically motivated to deny claims systematically, that may have
existed prior to twenty ten. Now there's a whole other
economic argument that it's bad for the insurance industry if
claims don't grow. They want claims to grow because that's
how they charge more premium. But set that aside. If
you accept the fact that, okay, before twenty ten, they
(04:44):
wanted to deny claims right to keep more money. That
all changed with Obamacare because, as a reminder for your listeners,
Obamacare coming in the law in March of twenty ten,
specifically said okay, now there's price controls. Now an insurance
company may only keep fifteen percent more than claims. So
what that means is when you add up all the
(05:04):
medical claims in a given year, the insurance company is
allowed to keep fifteen percent of that for its profit
and overhead. So everything flipped with Obamacare. The whole incentive
to keep costs down went away, and insurance companies very
quickly realized in twenty ten, oh my god, we need
claims to grow because that's the only way we can
charge more premium. So it's funny that a lot of
(05:25):
this is like you guys talk about when you hear
the mainstream media talk about radio, it's way more wrong
than it's right. Well, that's what's going on here is
everybody's talking about this book that was written in twenty
ten that spoke about a landscape that just doesn't even
exist anymore.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Well, that's interesting.
Speaker 5 (05:40):
And then in his manifesto he talked about how we
have the worst life expectancy of any first world country
or whatever. And then I heard that broken down yesterday
on how there's a number of reasons why that's inaccurate.
We count a life expectancy different than a lot of
people that put out their data or around childhood deaths
(06:03):
in the first year. We also are the only country
on the list where people drive a lot, and we
have a lot of deaths from automobiles, and then we
have a certain segment of society that's constantly shooting each other.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
If you take all those out, our life expectancy is.
Speaker 5 (06:17):
Pretty good, and it's got nothing to do None of
those things have anything to do with health insurance.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
No, you're exactly right, Jack, and deathly sentinel has nothing
to do with the level of my deductibles, right, yeah, yeah,
go ahead, Craig.
Speaker 6 (06:31):
Yeah, no, no, no, I was just going to say, and
then if there is I would just say, you know,
being inside of the healthcare industry and understanding all of
the various land mines in this world, if there's one
thing we have gotten incredibly good at as a society,
it's keeping people along who have acute conditions gunshot wounds,
you know, heart attack, putting, stents in addressing strokes right away,
(06:52):
or our healthcare system is amazing at addressing acute issues,
we're horrible at addressing chronic conditions.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Yeah, yeah, well I'd like to hear more about that.
Maybe next segment. Can you give folks a three to
four minute whatever you think is appropriate little primer for
people are not hip to this, the relationship between government
paid healthcare services and what they paid doctors and hospitals
and stuff, and those of us with private insurance, and
(07:20):
how Congress has handled the whole thing.
Speaker 6 (07:23):
Yeah, so this this started all the way back in
the late nineties. It started It started with Clinton. Bush
could kick the can down the road. Obama kicked the
can down the road. Every president's guilty of this issue.
But what happened starting in the nineties was medical inflation,
like true inflation, what hospitals and doctors needed to treat
you was going up faster than Medicare and Medicaid, which
is you know, when we talk about government healthcare, it's
(07:45):
overwhelmingly Medicare and Medicaid. Inflation was going up faster than
Medicare and Medicaid could handle. So one of the ways
that the government we're talking Congress, right, we're talking our legislature.
One of the ways they would pass these massive boondog
a law was to say, well, you know, the huge
part of our budget that's killing us as Medicare and Medicaid.
(08:05):
So what they would say is, well, we're going to
start reducing what we pay on Medicare and Medicaid. We're
gonna we're going to you know, reduce the increase or
have no increase at all from Medicare and Medicaid, and
that's how we're going to fund whatever pet project we're
trying to fund in our district. And that started occurring
in the nineties and it just kept getting kicked down
the road all the way along to the point where
(08:27):
Medicare and Medicaid payments have not kept up with true
medical inflation. So what happens then is employer plans, what
we call corporate plans. If for the roughly the third
of us who are getting our healthcare at work, we
have to pay many times three, four, five, six times
what Medicare would pay for a certain claim to make
(08:48):
up for the fact that the large hospital chains want
a larger reimbursement for those medical claims. So there's been
this insidious cost shift, the wink in a nod between
Wall Street and K Street, the lobbyists, and of course
Congress that has said, look, we'll keep the Medicare reimbursements
artificially low at like one percent increase per year, and
(09:09):
then that gives you the green light insurance industry to
go ahead and charge seven, eight, nine, ten percent more
every year to the private marketplace to pay for this
health care, to the point now where you just have
this ridiculous, absurd situation where employers are paying three to
six times what they should be for healthcare because Medicare
didn't keep up with the actual cost increases.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
And then Congress found a way to compel doctors and
hospitals to see Medicare and Medicaid patients even though they
were getting grossly underpaid for their services.
Speaker 6 (09:41):
Well compels. There's still there's no compel there. You can
still actually find individual doctors that won't take Medicare and Medicaid.
But it's still incredibly rare because there's this well A,
it's the largest customer, the federal government is now the
largest customer of every healthcare system. So I'm not sure
there is a hospital out there that doesn't take Medicare
and Medicaid. There are individual doctors that don't, but it's
(10:01):
there's a there's a you can't live on the one
third that are paying private rates. You still have to
take that Medicare amount.
Speaker 5 (10:08):
That number that you just hit us with only a
third of us or having the like traditional kind of
we got our insurance through our company at work, only
a third of.
Speaker 6 (10:16):
Us, Well I should, yeah, I should be more specific
with that, Jackets. It's probably closer to forty percent. I'm
falling back on the statistic that we've talked about on
your show before, and that's the seventy percent of healthcare
is now paid for by the taxpayers. Because when you
when you add up Medicare and Medicaid VA, you know
all of the community care programs, and then you even
(10:38):
add up all of the federal and state workers, taxpayers
pay about seventy percent. So about thirty percent of healthcare
is paid for by private individuals, but probably more like
forty percent are actually getting their healthcare at work. But
you know, some of us work for cities and states
and governments, et cetera. It's always way more complicated than
you hear.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Of course, of course, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6 (11:00):
One of the things one of the things we hit on. Hold,
I want to hit this Joe real quick, if you
don't mind, go ahead. Mentioned recently that we talked about
was in this and I pulled the stat because I
knew it blew your mind when we spoke about it privately.
It's about one hundred million Americans. Roughly thirty percent of
us are on a self funded health care plan, meaning
the person paying the claims behind the scene is your employer,
(11:22):
not the insurance company. They might be using United Healthcare
as an example to administer the claims, to actually process
the stuff, but the claims themselves. For roughly one third
of Americans, thirty percent is actually paid for by your employer.
Speaker 5 (11:36):
Nobody knows.
Speaker 6 (11:37):
I don't understand that.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
I didn't know that till you told me, right right.
Speaker 6 (11:41):
People don't understand it at all.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
So you did turned down it.
Speaker 5 (11:44):
Oftentimes it's your company that you work for hiding behind
with a healthcare company.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Exactly right.
Speaker 6 (11:52):
And then how do you know, Well, if you work
for an employer that has more than one thousand employees,
you're almost certainly on a self funded health plan. Because
people don't sure groups that large. Now, if you have
an employer that's between five hundred and one thousand employees,
it's probably fifty to fifty that you're on a self
funded health plan. When work for a small employer, it
is the insurance company. Anything under like two fifty, for sure,
it's the insurance company almost always.
Speaker 7 (12:13):
You know, I'd love to.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Chat a little bit about solutions. Can we take a
quick break and come back and chat a little more? Craig, Absolutely, Yeah.
Speaker 5 (12:20):
I got one more question too, man, Why has it
got to be so complicated? Or maybe being complicated is
the point?
Speaker 7 (12:29):
Stay tuned the Armstrong and Getty show, yea or Jack
or Joe podcasts and our hot links, the Jack Armstrong
and Joe Getty, the Armstrong and Getty show les.
Speaker 8 (12:52):
You know what's annoying me about this this kid who
killed this CEO is none of these news programs are
talking about the incredible lack of empathy from the general
public about this because of how these insurance companies treat
people when they are their most vulnerable. After we've all
given them our money every month and now we finally
(13:13):
need you, and all you do is deny us, and
then these and all of these things are taking the
pictures of their CEOs off their websites. You know, I
got to be honest with you, Okay, I love that
the CEOs are afraid right now.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
You should be.
Speaker 8 (13:29):
By and large, You're all a bunch of selfish, greedy pieces,
and a lot of you are mass murderers.
Speaker 5 (13:38):
You just don't pull the trigger. Wow, that is that's
Bill Burr, the comedian. That's some French Revolution stuff right there.
I mean, that is society completely coming apart. And I
don't want to get too off track on that, but
because of our healthcare guest we have here, expert Craig Gottwols,
I wanted to throw this out. I assume a lot
of people like Bill Burr and the people who are
(13:59):
cheering the death of the United Healthcare CEO are people
who want government healthcare. They want a complete government takeover
of health care and somehow believe that you won't have
any deny or delay if the government is running healthcare.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
What's the history of government healthcare around the world.
Speaker 6 (14:18):
Well, as we've talked on your show before many times,
it's horrific, right, I mean, there's a reason why you know,
Canadians come here in droves when they have serious issues
because they can actually get care if they have money.
Here you know, there's a free market. Well there's at
least the semblances of for free market and healthcare still
here in America. So you have rationing of health care
across the globe. Because anytime that you say, well, this
(14:41):
should be a human right now, there can be no
human right where I am dependent upon the labor of another.
That's not a thing right. So all healthcare has to
be rationed. It's either rationed by a waiting list Canada
or UK, or it's rationed by money. I mean, that's
just the reality of it all. What I would say,
the misplaced anger out there, it shouldn't be at the
(15:03):
specific insurers or whatever. It's the iron law bureaucracy at
play here, gentlemen. I mean, you have just the larger
these bureaucracies grow, whether they're public or private, they get
less personal and they become more dedicated to only fostering
their own survival. And that's exactly what we're seeing here
in healthcare. We're seeing the iron law bureaucracy at the
(15:23):
government level, the insurer level, and then of course them
working together to enrich themselves as much as they possibly can.
It's horrific. But you don't fix that by randomly slaughtering
somebody in the streets. I mean, it's just insane.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
Can you do sixty seconds on what would be first
steps to improve it? If you are going to advise Trump, say.
Speaker 6 (15:44):
Yeah, as you just mentioned before, I made a housing
difference in my career. My career is now housed somewhere
else as of March of this year, and I'm now
free to say even more than I did before. And
the reality is, as a guy who installs large insurance plans,
my best advice to everybody, individuals, employers, everybody buy as
(16:04):
little insurance as you can. Really interesting, yes, yes, because
you when you buy insurance, you're getting You're getting into
a negotiation and buying a product from private equity, Wall
Street and the government that has all been designed to
ensure that it makes the most money. Great, I get it,
we got to transfer risk for certain things. But if
you're buying insurance, you want the highest deductible you can get.
(16:26):
You want to self insure what you can because you're
never going to win in that transaction in the long run.
Speaker 5 (16:32):
That is fascinating. That is not what I did on
the most recent enrollment at the company.
Speaker 6 (16:38):
No, and it's it's it's especially at your company, I know,
because you guys are housed at a large enough place.
It's a self funded plan. I would again, I would
buy the highest deductible I can get, and I would
do the most I could myself. Now there's exceptance to that, right.
If you have a child with special needs, you know
you're going to spend a certain amount of a given year.
Of course, buying the richer plan might be advancing. Yeah,
I know, I think you are too, Jack, But as
(17:00):
a general rule, I would just say to people, whether
you're buying home insurance, auto insurance, health insurance, whether you're
an employee buying interest by you, you're not going to
win in a transaction.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
With Hey, Craig, I'm sorry to jump in. That's great stuff.
If people want more on benefits insurance, how can they
get a hold of you? Ten seconds?
Speaker 6 (17:17):
Gott Walls dot substack dot com is probably the fastest
and easiest way to get me.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
And we'll have a link at Armstrong in getty dot
com as well, so you can find it easily. Craig,
got weals, Craig, Thanks a million. Great to talk to you,
much more to come. Hope you can stick.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Around Jack Armstrong and Joe The Armstrong and Getty Show,
The Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
I've just become aware of Scott Jennings because he has
been hiding from humanity on CNN. But I love the
cut of his GiB. I love his act. He's calm,
he smart, he's reasonable. I positive last hour that gen
X would save the world, and I realized that somewhat
self serving, as we are on the older end of
gen X, but gen X known for kind of a
(18:03):
cut the crap. Don't don't mess around with us, just
give us the straight scoop feel not terribly ideological.
Speaker 5 (18:10):
I like you pitched us as not hippies, not uh
not not hippies on the one end, not needing coloring
books and puppies to deal with.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Bad news on the other end. Right, just for goodness sakes,
can we can we speak plainly to each other? Is
kind of sort of and I've always mocked a generation thing,
but it's kind of sort of the feel of gen
X anyway. I love that with Scott Jennings, essentially, and
this is my rallying cry today and probably for a
long time. Cut the crap. Scott is saying, cut the crap.
(18:42):
Obama deported lots and lots of people. You had nothing
to say, so cut the crap. It's crap right, all right,
thank you, And then you know I've got all I've
got a million examples. You've got this stuff from the
University of California, Davis, which is advising the federal government
on how to be a woke ally for the Alphabet
(19:03):
Soup crew, and they have stuff like, instead of saying
someone was born a boy or a girl, try saying
they were as signed male at birth. These terms recognize
the difference between section gender and emphasize the way in
which section gender are not binary or immutable. They can
be chained. No, cut the crap. A man can't become
(19:23):
a woman because he takes hormones. You start ovulating, call
me back, all right, then I'll concede you're a woman.
Cut the crap. Thought this was brilliant from Gerard Baker.
I'm gonna hit you with some of it. He's an
opinion writer for mostly the Journal, but Jack jump in
anytime you want, obviously, and he talks about Trump's election
(19:48):
is a bit of an emperor's new clothes moment for
American maybe the rest of the West, to an overdue
recognition and repudiation of the regime of oppressive insanity we've
been subjected to for a decade or more. I think
everybody's saying, yeah, man, well said, especially in Blue states,
(20:09):
And you know, I'm gonna issue a battle cry towards
the end of this. I understand you're working like, is
it gonna sound like that? It's a lot like that.
Speaker 7 (20:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Maybe maybe you're working at the infamous Uh you see
Davis or Berkeley in California and you're like, dude, I
would love to fight against this stuff. But but but,
and so it's always with the caveat of uh, do
what you can. But I'll tell you this, I can
practically guarantee no matter where you work, you live, you
worship whatever, if you stand up to the crap and
(20:43):
you say cut the crap, you're going to see a
bunch of people, maybe a few, maybe a ton, are
going to say, yeah, what he said. They're just waiting
for someone to call the emperor on having no clothes. Anyway,
did your our Baker's piece for a decade or more,
even when Republicans have been nominally in control, we've been
(21:03):
led by peddlers of a set of ideas that have
clothed our institutions in the country in social and political doctrines,
fake claims, and strictures that have inflicted untold harms. The
fancy new items of invisible attire that our nation's rulers
have made us wear for too long include these. The
idea that people who have stolen into this country illegally
(21:25):
should be showered with all the rights and benefits of citizens,
that it is immoral to deny them those rights, and
that they should instead be treated as victims of persecution
and given sanctuary in our crowded and fiscally strained cities.
Call bullless on that that's ridiculous. The idea that a
(21:46):
nation that sits atop one of the greatest reservoirs of
natural energy resources on Earth should forcibly restrain itself from
exploiting them to save the planet on the basis of
politicized science, while other countries are free to do much
more damage to the global environment. That's a good Gavin
cut the crap. That's a good one. At the risk
(22:07):
of going off on this as I did last hour,
meaningless effectless gestures in the face of all the other
countries that are doing what they're doing. You know, if
you were going to do some good, come to the
table with that argument. Say, yeah, we got to risk
damaging the economy, and poor people are going to stay poor,
and inflation's going to rise because energy prices affect everything.
(22:30):
But look that it's lowered emissions twenty percent globally, except
it hasn't hasn't done anything, So cut the crap. Here's
another good one, the idea that after a century and
a half of progress in solving and soothing America's original
sin of racism and making the country more equal, we
are suddenly obliged to believe that America is as oppressive
(22:53):
as it was in sixteen nineteen, and that the best
way to write the past wrong of treating people based
on the color of their skin is to treat people
based on the color of their skin. God, I hope
that's over. I really hope that's over. What we all
hope for is those radicals just nasty people. Don't have
(23:14):
the juice to end your career anymore because your management,
your corporate godfathers are such cowards. They're not going to
stand up to the crap. It's easier to fire you,
and they'll say on the way out. You know, Jim,
I'm really sorry about this. I mean, it's really unfortunate
they don't have the balls to say because you said
nothing wrong. But these people are so mad. I'm going
(23:35):
to capitulate to them. But that's what they're thinking, stand
up to it.
Speaker 5 (23:40):
I'm less optimistic on the illegal immigration part because I've
been fooled before. But on the trans and anti racist
and what was the other one I was going to
include in that It'll come to me.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
But on a couple of those, is it possible? Oh,
the climate change? Is it possible.
Speaker 5 (24:00):
We're on the other side of those, and we just all, unfortunately,
those of us of a certain age, just lived through
this really weird time.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
Yeah, we're things. People said, all kinds of crazy stuff
and you had to.
Speaker 5 (24:11):
Go along with it.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
I think we're at this stage of it where the
troops are rallied. Were aware, we're fired up. But you
got to remember the enemy is absolutely running our nation's
educational complex right now and our media and entertainment. But
education is the most insidious part because they're indoctrinating our kids.
So yeah, the battle has just begun. Here's another great one,
(24:34):
another one of these insane ideas that we've been forced
to pretend are not idiotic, The idea that children should,
without parental consultation or consent, be free to choose their gender,
be assisted by the state in committing acts of self
mutilation to do so, and all on the understanding that
(24:56):
we have repealed millennia of science and just discovered there's
no such thing as biological sex. Bull ass. Cut the crap.
Speaker 5 (25:06):
I think that one is the biggest anchor around Gavin
Newsom's neck. If he tries to run for president, How's
he gonna How's he gonna deal with that.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
Expiring experimenting on in mutilating children because they're momentarily confused
and I have adolescence, and Gavin signed in law the
idea that the schools can keep it a secret from you,
so that in fact they must, How does how does
he deal with that? I want that's one of the
reasons I want him to run. I want him to
be beaten like a drum for these reasons, because it's
(25:38):
important to defeat this crap. There's a little more more
of the Emperor's new clothes, that people have just been
walking around silently pretending they didn't notice or too afraid
to resist the idea that democracy and freedom are best
protected by denying people the right to express certain views
that the authorities deem misinformation and by weaponi using the
(26:00):
law against political opponents lest they weaponize the law for
political purposes. That's a good one. They're actually democrats out
right now saying, hey, you know, weaponizing law against candidates
is probably a bad strategy, admitting that that was the strategy.
So ambitious elites in business and civil society went along
(26:20):
with these fictions. Politicians on all sides, including Republicans, declined
to dissent for fear of being called out. And here's
where Gerard Baker gives Trump a fair amount of credit.
It took a man with some of the instincts of
a child, a political angenoux newcomer, lacking the sophistication to
(26:40):
participate in the sham, to call the whole thing out
for what it was. And then he makes it clear
that he's not like totally in on Trump and his
plans and his policies and the rest of it. But
for God's sake, we needed to call bulls on the bulls.
But here's what I'm optimistic about. He says, four years
(27:02):
from now, there's a good chance that the nonsense we
have had to endure will be buried, that important things
will become normal again. It will have become normal to
tell people they have who have no right to be here,
that they must leave. That In the process, people around
the world will have been made to understand that they
don't have an automatic right to live in the freest,
most prosperous country on earth. Then he goes on the children.
(27:23):
You know, I'm going to hit this because it's one
of my jihods. It will have become normal again for
children to be helped to respond to the inevitable strains
and traumas of growing up, not by having their genitals
cut out, but by receiving loving guidance, guidance and care
from family and society. Got the crab. I hope that's true.
(27:44):
I hope that's true. I think it's true. So yeah,
but I give you it's going to be longer and
harder battle than four years.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Man.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
The university system and their influence on the elementary education
system and secondary It's going to be a long, hard fight,
but I'm up for it. Are you?
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Jack Armstrong and Joe Gerty Armstrong and Getty Showy, Chris Ruffo,
you know him, you love him with a great piece.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
Why Boeing killed Dei and the lead is the important
part of reckoning is underway in corporate America. You remember,
after the death of George Floyd in twenty twenty, likely
every fortune five hundred company launched a diversity, equity and
inclusion program with very serious faces as they were running
terrified from the Marxists who claimed racial justice was their motivation.
(28:40):
But now four short years later, many companies are quietly
acknowledging the failure of these initiatives, in some cases winding
them down. And Rufo has been writing about Dei at
Boeing for a while. He's got an inside source, well placed,
high up, that described it this way quote, I thought
this was really good. DEI is the you put in
(29:00):
the bucket and the whole bucket changes. It is anti excellence,
and because it is ill defined, it becomes part of
the culture.
Speaker 5 (29:09):
That is some of the most evocative phrasing I've ever heard. Yeah,
the drop you put in the bucket, and it changes
the whole bucket. That's interesting, folks.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
You've become aware that the whole woke thing, DEI anti
racism thing, you can't win. It's a constantly moving target.
If you say you're not a racist, you're a racist.
And if you say you're a racist, you're a racist.
But either way you shut up. We're in charge. There's
no way to win against the woke people. That's not
part of it. They're not talking to you to come
(29:42):
to an understanding. They're talking to you to rule you.
And more people are understanding that. And in the context
of Boeing, obviously you know the doors are falling off
your planes for instance. Yeah, earlier this month, Bowing installed
new CEO Kelly Ortberg, quietly dismantled the DEI department and
accept the resignation of the office's vice president. So Rufo
(30:03):
reached out to the same insider to get insight onto
what happened and how it happened. And he says, tell
us what happened with DEI. It went from dominant to
extinct in a very short period of time. The insider says,
we're shifting from a company whose culture is simply the
average of corporate America to a distinct and deliberate vision
of leadership. The new boss wants Boeing focused on being
(30:26):
an airplane company with our own culture and vision. The
resulting cash crunch from the crunch from the strike accelerated
this culture shift. When you start to focus on delivering
value instead of preserving status, it becomes obvious what drives
value and it's not DI. And then he gets into
(30:47):
He asked my senses that many executives are not genuinely
committed to DEI as an ideology. They simply want to
build airplanes or create software, for instance, but they feel
social pressure to maintain these departments. Is that true at Boeing?
So when did the calculus change? And the answer is
DEI is lazy thought. Leadership best practiced by companies in
smooth waters with margins large enough to afford the associated inefficiency.
(31:11):
That isn't Boeing today. When the new boss prioritized results
over fitting in with other CEOs, it sends a strong
signal to the culture and builds trust because employees know
the rules and it's clear how to succeed through hard
work and results. McKinsey's at the consulting group now debunked.
Analysis was the standard driver in corporate boardrooms. But even
if DEI has to defend itself on purely logical grounds,
(31:34):
it doesn't stand up going More than anything needs an
aligned workforce focused on building airplanes. And it's an easy
decision to reject the divisive and US centric language of
DEI in favor of unified vision for a diverse global company. Anyway,
I thought that that was really good just as a
description of how it works.
Speaker 5 (31:52):
And DEI could go away under a Trump administration which
won't be working to push that on corporate America, Whereas
if the Kamala Harris administration, there would have been so
much pressure on all these companies to continue that or
added if they hadn't already.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
Right, And it's a bludgeon again, it's not about racial
justice or any of the things that claims to be about.
Like in Jacks scenario, which is a good one, the
Harris administration wanted Boeing to suddenly, you know, unionize its
last three facilities or something like that. Well, then they
can hammer them with DEI stuff or through their DEI
(32:31):
executives and get them on their knees begging for mercy
because they were being accused of racism. It's the old
Jesse Jackson operation push blackmail scam. You don't want racial justice,
you want something else, but you use claims of racial
injustice to get there. It's the race hustler thing. Anyway,
I thought this was good too. From the National Review,
Lathan Watts. DEI is a corporate bust, and he starts
(32:54):
about the He starts with the wild overreaction to the
death of George Floyd and how all the corporations were terrified,
and how Robbie Starbuck, the filmmaker, has been using sunlight
as the best disinfectant, and he's brought failed policies that
are legally questionable and highly unpopular with consumers to the
attention the general public and the shareholders of these corporations.
(33:16):
As a result, some of the best known brands in
the country have hastily canceled their DEI programs and cut
ties with the far left Human Rights Campaign, which pressures
companies to do things like cover sex hormones and puberty
blockers for miners. Wow, monstrous Nazi like experiments on children.
Has to cover that stuff and their insurance plan wow
(33:39):
yeah yeah, And I thought this was interesting. Unwilling to
let the practical failure of a policy distract from the
political fervor, forty nine members of Congress, keeping in mind
their four hundred and thirty five of these geeks, spurred
on signed an open letter to Fortune one thousand businesses
demanding that they doubled down on DEI. But these companies
(34:02):
have recently received two more open letters encouraging them to
hold the line in favor of healthy ROI return on
investment or feeble DEI ideology. I like that slogan OREI,
not DEI for the companies I want to invest in.
I love that the second of those two letters came
(34:25):
from seventeen state treasurers and other financial officials, state of
financial officials who are responsible for the gigantic state investment
vehicles that hold billions of dollars in ownership positions in
these companies for their retirees and that sort of thing.
And unlike the partisan gamesmanship paraphrasing the piece of the
National Review here where the forty nine Congress geeks liberal
(34:49):
CULTI jackasses are saying you've got to double down on DII,
these people are saying, hey, we don't have the luxury
of you and your virtue signaling crap. Run your company
for efficiency, please not to please AOC. And so it's
good to see you. Remember it was what a year
ago I started saying. And all DEI programs now wherever
(35:12):
they exist, and it's happening in spades. Hurrah, hurrah, better
for black people, better for white and Hispanic people. People,
in short, go get them awesome. The Tide Shirt turned
on that whole thing fast. Yeah, although it is still
monstrous in academia, media, Hollywood, and government in government itself, friends,
(35:35):
which is why I am always saying, this is just
the end of the beginning.
Speaker 5 (35:40):
Quick question for you, what if you happen to miss
this unbelievable radio program.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
The answer is easy, friends, Just download our podcast, Armstrong
and Getty on demand. It's the podcast version of the
broadcast show, available anytime, any day, every single podcast platform
known demand.
Speaker 5 (35:54):
Download it now Armstrong and Getty on Demand.
And broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio the
George Washington Broadcast Center.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
I'm strong, and and he I'm strong and Getty strong.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
Stop and think overall about the social contract?
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Can part of the.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
Deal and how we've kept this this democracy's economy of
this country on a fairly steady path for more than
two hundred years has been that those at the top.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Pay a little more in taxes, are a little.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
Less rich than they otherwise might be, and everybody else
at least gets chanced. And what happened when you turn
this into the billionaires run at all is they get
the opportunity to squeeze every last penny. Yeah, and look,
we'll say it over and over. Violence is never the answer.
This guy gets a trial who's allegedly killed the CEO
(01:15):
of United Health. But you can only push people so
far and then they start to take Matterson. It's their
own hands.
Speaker 5 (01:22):
Yeah, none, no, no, no, no, no no no no
no no, I'm.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Just doing the tomahawk chunk. How in the world does
she keep getting elected? Elizabeth Warren? So let's talk about
the murder of the healthcare CEO of the reaction to
us in all matters healthcare with Craig Gottwalls, Craig the
healthcare guru, attorney, law benefit consultant, Benefit or Revolution and
good longtime friend of the Ang Show. Craig, how are you, sir?
Speaker 6 (01:48):
I'm great, gentlemen, Thank you much for having me on.
Speaker 5 (01:50):
First of all, Joe and I went with humor around
the fact that she's a pretend Indian and glossed over
how outrageous that is what she just said. So much
wrong with that at every level anyway.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Now, Craig, is you as a person who has emerged
in the world of benefits and health care and insurance
and that sort of thing, and a person of good conscience,
et cetera, and a student of the media. What have
what's your reaction been to the murder and the ensuing discussion.
I know you've probably got a million things to say.
Speaker 6 (02:25):
Yeah, I think the oversimplified reaction I would give is,
you know, just the assumption that, like I just don't
even engage in the whole concept and the idea of
you know, it's appropriate to slaughter people in the streets
one individual because you don't like what a whole industry
is doing. I mean, obviously it's the most insane, ridiculous, murderous,
(02:46):
horrific way you would ever address any issue. And so,
of course, I think I think, guys, I think a
lot of what you're seeing out there is sort of
like you've said in the past, you know, like you're
frustrated at something, you're angry at something, and part of
humor is the dark sort of stuff that you're not
willing to say out loud. And I think a lot
of what we're seeing online is probably that, you know,
just the irreverent attempts at humor. But I mean, obviously
(03:09):
this isn't the way to address the matter. I mean,
we've created this government corporate alliance in healthcare that is
just bullied the American people for really for sixty years,
but most intensely for thirty years, and so you just
have tremendous frustration out there, and a lot of people
just don't even really understand where they should channel their frustration.
So a lot of the frustration channeling, if you will,
(03:32):
is falling along party lines, like everything else in our world.
So some people blame the government, some people blame private
equity and large corporations, and I'm here to tell you
there's plenty of blame to go around.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Yeah. The one thing that's frustrated is frustrated me. And
maybe you've heard us hammer on it, is that all
these people who howling about the greed of the healthcare companies,
the insurance companies and all, they never mentioned the unholy
nexus with governments and how Obamacare in particular just utterly
perverted the industry.
Speaker 6 (04:02):
Yes, it's funny you bring that up. I was thinking
of you know that the book that is cited. You know,
he had words written on the bullets, and a lot
of people jumped on the book Delay Defend, excuse me, Delay, Deny,
Defend by Jay Seinman was the book. That book was
written in twenty ten. So the reality is there, if
there ever was a time when large insurance companies were
(04:24):
financially economically motivated to deny claims systematically, that may have
existed prior to twenty ten. Now there's a whole other
economic argument that it's bad for the insurance industry if
claims don't grow. They want claims to grow because that's
how they charge more premium. But set that aside. If
you accept the fact that, okay, before twenty ten, they
(04:44):
wanted to deny claims right to keep more money. That
all changed with Obamacare because, as a reminder for your listeners,
Obamacare coming in the law in March of twenty ten,
specifically said okay, now there's price controls. Now an insurance
company may only keep fifteen percent more than claims. So
what that means is when you add up all the
(05:04):
medical claims in a given year, the insurance company is
allowed to keep fifteen percent of that for its profit
and overhead. So everything flipped with Obamacare. The whole incentive
to keep costs down went away, and insurance companies very
quickly realized in twenty ten, oh my god, we need
claims to grow because that's the only way we can
charge more premium. So it's funny that a lot of
(05:25):
this is like you guys talk about when you hear
the mainstream media talk about radio, it's way more wrong
than it's right. Well, that's what's going on here is
everybody's talking about this book that was written in twenty
ten that spoke about a landscape that just doesn't even
exist anymore.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Well, that's interesting.
Speaker 5 (05:40):
And then in his manifesto he talked about how we
have the worst life expectancy of any first world country
or whatever. And then I heard that broken down yesterday
on how there's a number of reasons why that's inaccurate.
We count a life expectancy different than a lot of
people that put out their data or around childhood deaths
(06:03):
in the first year. We also are the only country
on the list where people drive a lot, and we
have a lot of deaths from automobiles, and then we
have a certain segment of society that's constantly shooting each other.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
If you take all those out, our life expectancy is.
Speaker 5 (06:17):
Pretty good, and it's got nothing to do None of
those things have anything to do with health insurance.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
No, you're exactly right, Jack, and deathly sentinel has nothing
to do with the level of my deductibles, right, yeah, yeah,
go ahead, Craig.
Speaker 6 (06:31):
Yeah, no, no, no, I was just going to say, and
then if there is I would just say, you know,
being inside of the healthcare industry and understanding all of
the various land mines in this world, if there's one
thing we have gotten incredibly good at as a society,
it's keeping people along who have acute conditions gunshot wounds,
you know, heart attack, putting, stents in addressing strokes right away,
(06:52):
or our healthcare system is amazing at addressing acute issues,
we're horrible at addressing chronic conditions.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Yeah, yeah, well I'd like to hear more about that.
Maybe next segment. Can you give folks a three to
four minute whatever you think is appropriate little primer for
people are not hip to this, the relationship between government
paid healthcare services and what they paid doctors and hospitals
and stuff, and those of us with private insurance, and
(07:20):
how Congress has handled the whole thing.
Speaker 6 (07:23):
Yeah, so this this started all the way back in
the late nineties. It started It started with Clinton. Bush
could kick the can down the road. Obama kicked the
can down the road. Every president's guilty of this issue.
But what happened starting in the nineties was medical inflation,
like true inflation, what hospitals and doctors needed to treat
you was going up faster than Medicare and Medicaid, which
is you know, when we talk about government healthcare, it's
(07:45):
overwhelmingly Medicare and Medicaid. Inflation was going up faster than
Medicare and Medicaid could handle. So one of the ways
that the government we're talking Congress, right, we're talking our legislature.
One of the ways they would pass these massive boondog
a law was to say, well, you know, the huge
part of our budget that's killing us as Medicare and Medicaid.
(08:05):
So what they would say is, well, we're going to
start reducing what we pay on Medicare and Medicaid. We're
gonna we're going to you know, reduce the increase or
have no increase at all from Medicare and Medicaid, and
that's how we're going to fund whatever pet project we're
trying to fund in our district. And that started occurring
in the nineties and it just kept getting kicked down
the road all the way along to the point where
(08:27):
Medicare and Medicaid payments have not kept up with true
medical inflation. So what happens then is employer plans, what
we call corporate plans. If for the roughly the third
of us who are getting our healthcare at work, we
have to pay many times three, four, five, six times
what Medicare would pay for a certain claim to make
(08:48):
up for the fact that the large hospital chains want
a larger reimbursement for those medical claims. So there's been
this insidious cost shift, the wink in a nod between
Wall Street and K Street, the lobbyists, and of course
Congress that has said, look, we'll keep the Medicare reimbursements
artificially low at like one percent increase per year, and
(09:09):
then that gives you the green light insurance industry to
go ahead and charge seven, eight, nine, ten percent more
every year to the private marketplace to pay for this
health care, to the point now where you just have
this ridiculous, absurd situation where employers are paying three to
six times what they should be for healthcare because Medicare
didn't keep up with the actual cost increases.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
And then Congress found a way to compel doctors and
hospitals to see Medicare and Medicaid patients even though they
were getting grossly underpaid for their services.
Speaker 6 (09:41):
Well compels. There's still there's no compel there. You can
still actually find individual doctors that won't take Medicare and Medicaid.
But it's still incredibly rare because there's this well A,
it's the largest customer, the federal government is now the
largest customer of every healthcare system. So I'm not sure
there is a hospital out there that doesn't take Medicare
and Medicaid. There are individual doctors that don't, but it's
(10:01):
there's a there's a you can't live on the one
third that are paying private rates. You still have to
take that Medicare amount.
Speaker 5 (10:08):
That number that you just hit us with only a
third of us or having the like traditional kind of
we got our insurance through our company at work, only
a third of.
Speaker 6 (10:16):
Us, Well I should, yeah, I should be more specific
with that, Jackets. It's probably closer to forty percent. I'm
falling back on the statistic that we've talked about on
your show before, and that's the seventy percent of healthcare
is now paid for by the taxpayers. Because when you
when you add up Medicare and Medicaid VA, you know
all of the community care programs, and then you even
(10:38):
add up all of the federal and state workers, taxpayers
pay about seventy percent. So about thirty percent of healthcare
is paid for by private individuals, but probably more like
forty percent are actually getting their healthcare at work. But
you know, some of us work for cities and states
and governments, et cetera. It's always way more complicated than
you hear.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Of course, of course, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6 (11:00):
One of the things one of the things we hit on. Hold,
I want to hit this Joe real quick, if you
don't mind, go ahead. Mentioned recently that we talked about
was in this and I pulled the stat because I
knew it blew your mind when we spoke about it privately.
It's about one hundred million Americans. Roughly thirty percent of
us are on a self funded health care plan, meaning
the person paying the claims behind the scene is your employer,
(11:22):
not the insurance company. They might be using United Healthcare
as an example to administer the claims, to actually process
the stuff, but the claims themselves. For roughly one third
of Americans, thirty percent is actually paid for by your employer.
Speaker 5 (11:36):
Nobody knows.
Speaker 6 (11:37):
I don't understand that.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
I didn't know that till you told me, right right.
Speaker 6 (11:41):
People don't understand it at all.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
So you did turned down it.
Speaker 5 (11:44):
Oftentimes it's your company that you work for hiding behind
with a healthcare company.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Exactly right.
Speaker 6 (11:52):
And then how do you know, Well, if you work
for an employer that has more than one thousand employees,
you're almost certainly on a self funded health plan. Because
people don't sure groups that large. Now, if you have
an employer that's between five hundred and one thousand employees,
it's probably fifty to fifty that you're on a self
funded health plan. When work for a small employer, it
is the insurance company. Anything under like two fifty, for sure,
it's the insurance company almost always.
Speaker 7 (12:13):
You know, I'd love to.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Chat a little bit about solutions. Can we take a
quick break and come back and chat a little more? Craig, Absolutely, Yeah.
Speaker 5 (12:20):
I got one more question too, man, Why has it
got to be so complicated? Or maybe being complicated is
the point?
Speaker 7 (12:29):
Stay tuned the Armstrong and Getty show, yea or Jack
or Joe podcasts and our hot links, the Jack Armstrong
and Joe Getty, the Armstrong and Getty show les.
Speaker 8 (12:52):
You know what's annoying me about this this kid who
killed this CEO is none of these news programs are
talking about the incredible lack of empathy from the general
public about this because of how these insurance companies treat
people when they are their most vulnerable. After we've all
given them our money every month and now we finally
(13:13):
need you, and all you do is deny us, and
then these and all of these things are taking the
pictures of their CEOs off their websites. You know, I
got to be honest with you, Okay, I love that
the CEOs are afraid right now.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
You should be.
Speaker 8 (13:29):
By and large, You're all a bunch of selfish, greedy pieces,
and a lot of you are mass murderers.
Speaker 5 (13:38):
You just don't pull the trigger. Wow, that is that's
Bill Burr, the comedian. That's some French Revolution stuff right there.
I mean, that is society completely coming apart. And I
don't want to get too off track on that, but
because of our healthcare guest we have here, expert Craig Gottwols,
I wanted to throw this out. I assume a lot
of people like Bill Burr and the people who are
(13:59):
cheering the death of the United Healthcare CEO are people
who want government healthcare. They want a complete government takeover
of health care and somehow believe that you won't have
any deny or delay if the government is running healthcare.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
What's the history of government healthcare around the world.
Speaker 6 (14:18):
Well, as we've talked on your show before many times,
it's horrific, right, I mean, there's a reason why you know,
Canadians come here in droves when they have serious issues
because they can actually get care if they have money.
Here you know, there's a free market. Well there's at
least the semblances of for free market and healthcare still
here in America. So you have rationing of health care
across the globe. Because anytime that you say, well, this
(14:41):
should be a human right now, there can be no
human right where I am dependent upon the labor of another.
That's not a thing right. So all healthcare has to
be rationed. It's either rationed by a waiting list Canada
or UK, or it's rationed by money. I mean, that's
just the reality of it all. What I would say,
the misplaced anger out there, it shouldn't be at the
(15:03):
specific insurers or whatever. It's the iron law bureaucracy at
play here, gentlemen. I mean, you have just the larger
these bureaucracies grow, whether they're public or private, they get
less personal and they become more dedicated to only fostering
their own survival. And that's exactly what we're seeing here
in healthcare. We're seeing the iron law bureaucracy at the
(15:23):
government level, the insurer level, and then of course them
working together to enrich themselves as much as they possibly can.
It's horrific. But you don't fix that by randomly slaughtering
somebody in the streets. I mean, it's just insane.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
Can you do sixty seconds on what would be first
steps to improve it? If you are going to advise Trump, say.
Speaker 6 (15:44):
Yeah, as you just mentioned before, I made a housing
difference in my career. My career is now housed somewhere
else as of March of this year, and I'm now
free to say even more than I did before. And
the reality is, as a guy who installs large insurance plans,
my best advice to everybody, individuals, employers, everybody buy as
(16:04):
little insurance as you can. Really interesting, yes, yes, because
you when you buy insurance, you're getting You're getting into
a negotiation and buying a product from private equity, Wall
Street and the government that has all been designed to
ensure that it makes the most money. Great, I get it,
we got to transfer risk for certain things. But if
you're buying insurance, you want the highest deductible you can get.
(16:26):
You want to self insure what you can because you're
never going to win in that transaction in the long run.
Speaker 5 (16:32):
That is fascinating. That is not what I did on
the most recent enrollment at the company.
Speaker 6 (16:38):
No, and it's it's it's especially at your company, I know,
because you guys are housed at a large enough place.
It's a self funded plan. I would again, I would
buy the highest deductible I can get, and I would
do the most I could myself. Now there's exceptance to that, right.
If you have a child with special needs, you know
you're going to spend a certain amount of a given year.
Of course, buying the richer plan might be advancing. Yeah,
I know, I think you are too, Jack, But as
(17:00):
a general rule, I would just say to people, whether
you're buying home insurance, auto insurance, health insurance, whether you're
an employee buying interest by you, you're not going to
win in a transaction.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
With Hey, Craig, I'm sorry to jump in. That's great stuff.
If people want more on benefits insurance, how can they
get a hold of you? Ten seconds?
Speaker 6 (17:17):
Gott Walls dot substack dot com is probably the fastest
and easiest way to get me.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
And we'll have a link at Armstrong in getty dot
com as well, so you can find it easily. Craig,
got weals, Craig, Thanks a million. Great to talk to you,
much more to come. Hope you can stick.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Around Jack Armstrong and Joe The Armstrong and Getty Show,
The Armstrong and Getty Show.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
I've just become aware of Scott Jennings because he has
been hiding from humanity on CNN. But I love the
cut of his GiB. I love his act. He's calm,
he smart, he's reasonable. I positive last hour that gen
X would save the world, and I realized that somewhat
self serving, as we are on the older end of
gen X, but gen X known for kind of a
(18:03):
cut the crap. Don't don't mess around with us, just
give us the straight scoop feel not terribly ideological.
Speaker 5 (18:10):
I like you pitched us as not hippies, not uh
not not hippies on the one end, not needing coloring
books and puppies to deal with.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Bad news on the other end. Right, just for goodness sakes,
can we can we speak plainly to each other? Is
kind of sort of and I've always mocked a generation thing,
but it's kind of sort of the feel of gen
X anyway. I love that with Scott Jennings, essentially, and
this is my rallying cry today and probably for a
long time. Cut the crap. Scott is saying, cut the crap.
(18:42):
Obama deported lots and lots of people. You had nothing
to say, so cut the crap. It's crap right, all right,
thank you, And then you know I've got all I've
got a million examples. You've got this stuff from the
University of California, Davis, which is advising the federal government
on how to be a woke ally for the Alphabet
(19:03):
Soup crew, and they have stuff like, instead of saying
someone was born a boy or a girl, try saying
they were as signed male at birth. These terms recognize
the difference between section gender and emphasize the way in
which section gender are not binary or immutable. They can
be chained. No, cut the crap. A man can't become
(19:23):
a woman because he takes hormones. You start ovulating, call
me back, all right, then I'll concede you're a woman.
Cut the crap. Thought this was brilliant from Gerard Baker.
I'm gonna hit you with some of it. He's an
opinion writer for mostly the Journal, but Jack jump in
anytime you want, obviously, and he talks about Trump's election
(19:48):
is a bit of an emperor's new clothes moment for
American maybe the rest of the West, to an overdue
recognition and repudiation of the regime of oppressive insanity we've
been subjected to for a decade or more. I think
everybody's saying, yeah, man, well said, especially in Blue states,
(20:09):
And you know, I'm gonna issue a battle cry towards
the end of this. I understand you're working like, is
it gonna sound like that? It's a lot like that.
Speaker 7 (20:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Maybe maybe you're working at the infamous Uh you see
Davis or Berkeley in California and you're like, dude, I
would love to fight against this stuff. But but but,
and so it's always with the caveat of uh, do
what you can. But I'll tell you this, I can
practically guarantee no matter where you work, you live, you
worship whatever, if you stand up to the crap and
(20:43):
you say cut the crap, you're going to see a
bunch of people, maybe a few, maybe a ton, are
going to say, yeah, what he said. They're just waiting
for someone to call the emperor on having no clothes. Anyway,
did your our Baker's piece for a decade or more,
even when Republicans have been nominally in control, we've been
(21:03):
led by peddlers of a set of ideas that have
clothed our institutions in the country in social and political doctrines,
fake claims, and strictures that have inflicted untold harms. The
fancy new items of invisible attire that our nation's rulers
have made us wear for too long include these. The
idea that people who have stolen into this country illegally
(21:25):
should be showered with all the rights and benefits of citizens,
that it is immoral to deny them those rights, and
that they should instead be treated as victims of persecution
and given sanctuary in our crowded and fiscally strained cities.
Call bullless on that that's ridiculous. The idea that a
(21:46):
nation that sits atop one of the greatest reservoirs of
natural energy resources on Earth should forcibly restrain itself from
exploiting them to save the planet on the basis of
politicized science, while other countries are free to do much
more damage to the global environment. That's a good Gavin
cut the crap. That's a good one. At the risk
(22:07):
of going off on this as I did last hour,
meaningless effectless gestures in the face of all the other
countries that are doing what they're doing. You know, if
you were going to do some good, come to the
table with that argument. Say, yeah, we got to risk
damaging the economy, and poor people are going to stay poor,
and inflation's going to rise because energy prices affect everything.
(22:30):
But look that it's lowered emissions twenty percent globally, except
it hasn't hasn't done anything, So cut the crap. Here's
another good one, the idea that after a century and
a half of progress in solving and soothing America's original
sin of racism and making the country more equal, we
are suddenly obliged to believe that America is as oppressive
(22:53):
as it was in sixteen nineteen, and that the best
way to write the past wrong of treating people based
on the color of their skin is to treat people
based on the color of their skin. God, I hope
that's over. I really hope that's over. What we all
hope for is those radicals just nasty people. Don't have
(23:14):
the juice to end your career anymore because your management,
your corporate godfathers are such cowards. They're not going to
stand up to the crap. It's easier to fire you,
and they'll say on the way out. You know, Jim,
I'm really sorry about this. I mean, it's really unfortunate
they don't have the balls to say because you said
nothing wrong. But these people are so mad. I'm going
(23:35):
to capitulate to them. But that's what they're thinking, stand
up to it.
Speaker 5 (23:40):
I'm less optimistic on the illegal immigration part because I've
been fooled before. But on the trans and anti racist
and what was the other one I was going to
include in that It'll come to me.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
But on a couple of those, is it possible? Oh,
the climate change? Is it possible.
Speaker 5 (24:00):
We're on the other side of those, and we just all, unfortunately,
those of us of a certain age, just lived through
this really weird time.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
Yeah, we're things. People said, all kinds of crazy stuff
and you had to.
Speaker 5 (24:11):
Go along with it.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
I think we're at this stage of it where the
troops are rallied. Were aware, we're fired up. But you
got to remember the enemy is absolutely running our nation's
educational complex right now and our media and entertainment. But
education is the most insidious part because they're indoctrinating our kids.
So yeah, the battle has just begun. Here's another great one,
(24:34):
another one of these insane ideas that we've been forced
to pretend are not idiotic, The idea that children should,
without parental consultation or consent, be free to choose their gender,
be assisted by the state in committing acts of self
mutilation to do so, and all on the understanding that
(24:56):
we have repealed millennia of science and just discovered there's
no such thing as biological sex. Bull ass. Cut the crap.
Speaker 5 (25:06):
I think that one is the biggest anchor around Gavin
Newsom's neck. If he tries to run for president, How's
he gonna How's he gonna deal with that.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
Expiring experimenting on in mutilating children because they're momentarily confused
and I have adolescence, and Gavin signed in law the
idea that the schools can keep it a secret from you,
so that in fact they must, How does how does
he deal with that? I want that's one of the
reasons I want him to run. I want him to
be beaten like a drum for these reasons, because it's
(25:38):
important to defeat this crap. There's a little more more
of the Emperor's new clothes, that people have just been
walking around silently pretending they didn't notice or too afraid
to resist the idea that democracy and freedom are best
protected by denying people the right to express certain views
that the authorities deem misinformation and by weaponi using the
(26:00):
law against political opponents lest they weaponize the law for
political purposes. That's a good one. They're actually democrats out
right now saying, hey, you know, weaponizing law against candidates
is probably a bad strategy, admitting that that was the strategy.
So ambitious elites in business and civil society went along
(26:20):
with these fictions. Politicians on all sides, including Republicans, declined
to dissent for fear of being called out. And here's
where Gerard Baker gives Trump a fair amount of credit.
It took a man with some of the instincts of
a child, a political angenoux newcomer, lacking the sophistication to
(26:40):
participate in the sham, to call the whole thing out
for what it was. And then he makes it clear
that he's not like totally in on Trump and his
plans and his policies and the rest of it. But
for God's sake, we needed to call bulls on the bulls.
But here's what I'm optimistic about. He says, four years
(27:02):
from now, there's a good chance that the nonsense we
have had to endure will be buried, that important things
will become normal again. It will have become normal to
tell people they have who have no right to be here,
that they must leave. That In the process, people around
the world will have been made to understand that they
don't have an automatic right to live in the freest,
most prosperous country on earth. Then he goes on the children.
(27:23):
You know, I'm going to hit this because it's one
of my jihods. It will have become normal again for
children to be helped to respond to the inevitable strains
and traumas of growing up, not by having their genitals
cut out, but by receiving loving guidance, guidance and care
from family and society. Got the crab. I hope that's true.
(27:44):
I hope that's true. I think it's true. So yeah,
but I give you it's going to be longer and
harder battle than four years.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Man.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
The university system and their influence on the elementary education
system and secondary It's going to be a long, hard fight,
but I'm up for it. Are you?
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Jack Armstrong and Joe Gerty Armstrong and Getty Showy, Chris Ruffo,
you know him, you love him with a great piece.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
Why Boeing killed Dei and the lead is the important
part of reckoning is underway in corporate America. You remember,
after the death of George Floyd in twenty twenty, likely
every fortune five hundred company launched a diversity, equity and
inclusion program with very serious faces as they were running
terrified from the Marxists who claimed racial justice was their motivation.
(28:40):
But now four short years later, many companies are quietly
acknowledging the failure of these initiatives, in some cases winding
them down. And Rufo has been writing about Dei at
Boeing for a while. He's got an inside source, well placed,
high up, that described it this way quote, I thought
this was really good. DEI is the you put in
(29:00):
the bucket and the whole bucket changes. It is anti excellence,
and because it is ill defined, it becomes part of
the culture.
Speaker 5 (29:09):
That is some of the most evocative phrasing I've ever heard. Yeah,
the drop you put in the bucket, and it changes
the whole bucket. That's interesting, folks.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
You've become aware that the whole woke thing, DEI anti
racism thing, you can't win. It's a constantly moving target.
If you say you're not a racist, you're a racist.
And if you say you're a racist, you're a racist.
But either way you shut up. We're in charge. There's
no way to win against the woke people. That's not
part of it. They're not talking to you to come
(29:42):
to an understanding. They're talking to you to rule you.
And more people are understanding that. And in the context
of Boeing, obviously you know the doors are falling off
your planes for instance. Yeah, earlier this month, Bowing installed
new CEO Kelly Ortberg, quietly dismantled the DEI department and
accept the resignation of the office's vice president. So Rufo
(30:03):
reached out to the same insider to get insight onto
what happened and how it happened. And he says, tell
us what happened with DEI. It went from dominant to
extinct in a very short period of time. The insider says,
we're shifting from a company whose culture is simply the
average of corporate America to a distinct and deliberate vision
of leadership. The new boss wants Boeing focused on being
(30:26):
an airplane company with our own culture and vision. The
resulting cash crunch from the crunch from the strike accelerated
this culture shift. When you start to focus on delivering
value instead of preserving status, it becomes obvious what drives
value and it's not DI. And then he gets into
(30:47):
He asked my senses that many executives are not genuinely
committed to DEI as an ideology. They simply want to
build airplanes or create software, for instance, but they feel
social pressure to maintain these departments. Is that true at Boeing?
So when did the calculus change? And the answer is
DEI is lazy thought. Leadership best practiced by companies in
smooth waters with margins large enough to afford the associated inefficiency.
(31:11):
That isn't Boeing today. When the new boss prioritized results
over fitting in with other CEOs, it sends a strong
signal to the culture and builds trust because employees know
the rules and it's clear how to succeed through hard
work and results. McKinsey's at the consulting group now debunked.
Analysis was the standard driver in corporate boardrooms. But even
if DEI has to defend itself on purely logical grounds,
(31:34):
it doesn't stand up going More than anything needs an
aligned workforce focused on building airplanes. And it's an easy
decision to reject the divisive and US centric language of
DEI in favor of unified vision for a diverse global company. Anyway,
I thought that that was really good just as a
description of how it works.
Speaker 5 (31:52):
And DEI could go away under a Trump administration which
won't be working to push that on corporate America, Whereas
if the Kamala Harris administration, there would have been so
much pressure on all these companies to continue that or
added if they hadn't already.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
Right, And it's a bludgeon again, it's not about racial
justice or any of the things that claims to be about.
Like in Jacks scenario, which is a good one, the
Harris administration wanted Boeing to suddenly, you know, unionize its
last three facilities or something like that. Well, then they
can hammer them with DEI stuff or through their DEI
(32:31):
executives and get them on their knees begging for mercy
because they were being accused of racism. It's the old
Jesse Jackson operation push blackmail scam. You don't want racial justice,
you want something else, but you use claims of racial
injustice to get there. It's the race hustler thing. Anyway,
I thought this was good too. From the National Review,
Lathan Watts. DEI is a corporate bust, and he starts
(32:54):
about the He starts with the wild overreaction to the
death of George Floyd and how all the corporations were terrified,
and how Robbie Starbuck, the filmmaker, has been using sunlight
as the best disinfectant, and he's brought failed policies that
are legally questionable and highly unpopular with consumers to the
attention the general public and the shareholders of these corporations.
(33:16):
As a result, some of the best known brands in
the country have hastily canceled their DEI programs and cut
ties with the far left Human Rights Campaign, which pressures
companies to do things like cover sex hormones and puberty
blockers for miners. Wow, monstrous Nazi like experiments on children.
Has to cover that stuff and their insurance plan wow
(33:39):
yeah yeah, And I thought this was interesting. Unwilling to
let the practical failure of a policy distract from the
political fervor, forty nine members of Congress, keeping in mind
their four hundred and thirty five of these geeks, spurred
on signed an open letter to Fortune one thousand businesses
demanding that they doubled down on DEI. But these companies
(34:02):
have recently received two more open letters encouraging them to
hold the line in favor of healthy ROI return on
investment or feeble DEI ideology. I like that slogan OREI,
not DEI for the companies I want to invest in.
I love that the second of those two letters came
(34:25):
from seventeen state treasurers and other financial officials, state of
financial officials who are responsible for the gigantic state investment
vehicles that hold billions of dollars in ownership positions in
these companies for their retirees and that sort of thing.
And unlike the partisan gamesmanship paraphrasing the piece of the
National Review here where the forty nine Congress geeks liberal
(34:49):
CULTI jackasses are saying you've got to double down on DII,
these people are saying, hey, we don't have the luxury
of you and your virtue signaling crap. Run your company
for efficiency, please not to please AOC. And so it's
good to see you. Remember it was what a year
ago I started saying. And all DEI programs now wherever
(35:12):
they exist, and it's happening in spades. Hurrah, hurrah, better
for black people, better for white and Hispanic people. People,
in short, go get them awesome. The Tide Shirt turned
on that whole thing fast. Yeah, although it is still
monstrous in academia, media, Hollywood, and government in government itself, friends,
(35:35):
which is why I am always saying, this is just
the end of the beginning.
Speaker 5 (35:40):
Quick question for you, what if you happen to miss
this unbelievable radio program.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
The answer is easy, friends, Just download our podcast, Armstrong
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Speaker 5 (35:54):
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